


Searching for the Truth

by sanctum_c



Series: Tifa Week 2020 [4]
Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:54:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26919937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanctum_c/pseuds/sanctum_c
Summary: The man at the station said her name.
Series: Tifa Week 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1827742
Kudos: 7





	Searching for the Truth

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt '“It’s too late to save me. Don’t you come my way, don’t pray for me ‘cause I saved myself.” - invisible chains by lauren jauregui.'

The stranger said her name.

His eyes focused, his head stopped lolling.

She crouched, frozen, hand halfway to touching him unsure of everything.

Who?

“Cloud?”

Dizzy, the ground threatening to slip out from under her. A struggling stranger revealed with one word to be someone she had not seen in seven years. A pity he insisted it was a mere five. But-

Cloud arrived back into her life. Impossible to find before, vanished into the world without another word. Never famous, but who could be as famed as Sephiroth? There were other SOLDIERs, but Tifa could name only one other- Her breathing had sped up, the thought brought her hand to her shirt involuntarily. Conscious of the wound still present on her skin. In her skin.

Cloud talked in curiously vague terms of the time after the fire. Of the places he visited. Her head still reeled, mind trying to fit puzzle pieces together. He knew about the fire. He knew Sephiroth had come to Nibelheim. He remembered Tifa. But she- She remembered a different SOLDIER. Another youth barely older than Cloud would have been. But unlike the Cloud of Nibelheim, the boy was all cock-sure smile and energy-

Where had Zack gone to? No public announcement of his demise like Sephiroth. No mention of him at all; the world did not care.

And Cloud quit Shinra somehow and somewhen after the fire. Roamed the world as a mercenary, though the litany of names would be the same locations he visited on his way to Midgar the first time. The sights she never witnessed in those weeks missing from her memory. And somehow Cloud, despite everything Shinra did, despite his resignation from SOLDIER, wound up here. Right below the company responsible for the destruction of his home. The death of her father. The death- Oh.

His mother. Could she possibly have survived the inferno?

Tifa’s presence in Midgar should be as incongruous as Cloud’s; but her journey here was not at her behest – transported from Nibelheim by persons unknown. Cloud chose to come here twice. Missing too from his story was any explanation of the immediate preceding events. What lead him to lie near insensible on the station. He wore the uniform of a SOLDIER and carried a sword – from memory – similar to the one wielded by Zack. The weapon of a SOLDIER. Unless you were Sephiroth-

Fingers tightening on the cotton of her shirt all over again. Tifa forced her hand down.

No doubt in Cloud’s words. He was certain. But how?

They both remembered the fire. Remembered Sephiroth’s arrival in the town-

She probed further and tried to step through the uncomfortable sequence before the darkness. A frenzied dash up the slopes of the mountain and to the reactor-

Her confrontation with Sephiroth, her attempt to wield the Masamune.

But something distracted Cloud. Glancing around- and up for some reason. Had to move on. Had to go. He was a mercenary and would go where work needed him.

She offered him a job with Avalanche.

A stupid decision, but he was already trying to pull away; shuffling feet and checking exits. The assault on the reactor was today. An extra person would help them out. And the wonderful irony of using one of Shinra’s own weapons against them.

Mostly it gave her time. Time to think. She remembered those last days of Nibelheim. Or thought she did. Was Cloud right? Had he been there and it was she who remembered wrongly? Her fall at the reactor, the time spent unconscious- Like the time in the mountains. Were her memories muddled? Not wrong – the fire had happened and Sephiroth was there. But the detail? How much of it was wrong?

Something to check with Cloud after this. Another confirmation. The promise. Mortifying to consider so much later, when she did not want or need him to swoop in to rescue her. But if he remembered the night at the well – if his experience matched her memories-

If he remembered a night under the stars – and how strange it was for him to reach out to her. To ask her – as so many others had – to meet with him before they left town. Something she could hang onto. A certainty now he had unseated her prior confidence. And if he remembered it differently or similar with variances- What to conclude?

Asking him about the promise would not answer the question definitively. No confirmation her memory was righter than his and the foundations of her past were now shifting leaving her trapped. Until she found the truth.


End file.
